Skinny Love
by littledaybreaker
Summary: No matter how deep they got in all of this A-Team stuff, no matter how tightly Red Coat's chokehold was on them, Spencer was like sunshine, a breath of fresh air, a reminder that he was a person, a person who deserved every good thing that came to him, no matter what Red Coat or Jenna-in-his-head had to say about it, and he intended to keep her, no matter the cost.


Author's notes: I wrote this almost entirely on my iPad, so I apologize if there are any typos though I proofread pretty thoroughly. Lyrics are from Bon Iver's "Skinny Love". It kind of follows its own little timeline, but spoilers if you don't know who Red Coat is. (or is alleged to be...)

_Come on skinny love, just last the year  
pour a little salt, we were never here_

All Toby had ever wanted was to fall in love and to be loved back. His own personal Jenna Thing made him feel like he wasn't worthy of it, like he didn't deserve anything more than the things that he had, than the way that people treated him. He was worthless, he was nothing, he was a creep, but he wanted to be loved nonetheless.

Spencer had taken him by surprise. Because although she held her own kind of darkness (who didn't, in Rosewood, anyway?), in Toby's eyes she was a kind of perfect so glossy she didn't seem human, more like some kind of ethereal, transcendent being from someplace far better than shitty Earth and certainly better than shitty Rosewood, and she was certainly too good for someone like him.

He couldn't help loving her, though, even if he had wanted to, there was nothing he could do to change it. All he could do was cling tight to it and hope that all of the darkness, all of their secrets and half-truths and outright lies wouldn't get in the way of the best thing he had ever managed to find.

_My my my my my my my  
Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer_

"I thought I was protecting you," he began, but the words died on his lips at the look of betrayal on Spencer's face, the look of _hurt_. He was supposed to be her safe spot, he knew. He was supposed to be the person in her life that was safe, that was good and pure, and he had ruined it. Bile rose in his throat. He had ruined every good thing he had ever had. _Nothing,_ said Jenna-in-his-head. _You deserve nothing. Not even Spencer Hastings._  
"Shut up, Jenna," he mumbled, and the look on Spencer's face let him know that he had said it aloud. "Spencer-" he tried again, but she had already risen to leave, her face blank.

On her way out the door, Toby grabbed her, his arms around her waist, their foreheads pressed together. And although he could see tears in her eyes, Spencer did not resist. "I love you," Toby said, "And maybe one day, one day...all of this will be over, and we can get out of this shitty town and ride off into the sunset and I'll give you the life you deserve, but right now...right now just know that everything I do is for you, okay?"  
Almost imperceptibly, Spencer nodded. Toby hugged her as tightly as he could before finally letting her go.

_tell my love to wreck it all_  
_Cut out all the ropes and let me fall  
My my my my my my my  
Right in this moment this order's tall_

If there was one thing that Spencer should have learned through all of the things she had been through since Ali died, it was that good people sometimes did bad things and that people who seemed good almost never were, and maybe that was the reason she couldn't let Toby go.

She had tried shoving him from her mind and pretending he'd never happened, pretending she had never learned the way he tasted, the way that he had a secret smile just for her, the way he could make her heart beat a little faster just by looking at her or the million other little things she had learned-and loved-about Toby Cavanaugh. Pretending that she had never loved him right back. She told herself that he was a bad person, that he had hurt her friends and her, that he wasn't worth her time, that she could do so much better than a person like him.

But she had done her fair share of bad things too, and if it was a competition, she was sure that her list of sins would far surpass Toby's. She was a good person who had done some bad things with good intentions, and so was he. Maybe this was the reason they needed each other, the reason she could never really shake him off. There was no one else in the world who could understand their particular brand of broken.

_And I told you to be patient_  
_And I told you to be fine  
And I told you to be balanced  
And I told you to be kind_

"We won't be here forever," Toby promised, kissing the spot just below Spencer's ear that always made her shiver, just to see her shiver. "Someday I'm going to take you away from here and give you lots of babies."  
Spencer giggled. "I want lots of babies," she replied, her hands roaming all over Toby's back.  
"I love you," he whispered, kissing her on the mouth, long and slow and desperate.  
"I love you," Spencer mumbled against his lips, kissing him back hungrily. They had both agreed not to see each other anymore, but they couldn't seem to keep that agreement, even if it meant sneaking around, stealing kisses in motels that rented by the hour and in the dark corners of Spencer's house where only the housekeeper went when her parents weren't home. It didn't matter, not when they couldn't seem to keep their hands off each other.  
When they finally broke the kiss, Spencer looked up at him, her eyes shining and desperate. "Take me away right now," she pleaded, her fingers tracing little patterns on his collarbones, making him shiver and something stir deep in his abdomen. "I don't want to be here anymore."  
Toby ran his hands through her hair, kissing her tenderly. "Patient," he repeated. "When this is over, we'll run away together. I promise you."  
Spencer buried her head in his chest. "I don't want to wait that long," she whispered.  
Toby kissed the top of her head, barely suppressing tears. "I don't either," he admitted with a trembling voice. "But this will all be worth it in the end."  
Spencer looked up at him. "Promise?" she asked.  
Toby stroked her cheek. "I promise."

_In the morning I'll be with you_  
_But it will be a different kind  
I'll be holding all the tickets  
And you'll be owing all the fines_

They hadn't seen much of each other for days after Toby's promise. It wasn't on purpose, not exactly, it was a complication of the million things that held them back in the first place-all of their individual demons plus the one they shared-and for Toby it felt like they had been apart for years when he finally saw her again. _I love you_, he thought as he showed her around his motel room. _I really, really love you_, he thought as she talked about how hurt she had been and how it had felt to be ignored by him. _I love you so much. I want to take you far away from here and never come back_, he thought as she knelt in front of him and pressed their lips together. "I love you," he murmured as their bodies met in bed and his lips brushed against the sensitive spots that made her moan.

When they woke in the morning things were different although not altogether unpleasant. Just changed, in some imperceptible way. Toby felt like he was standing on one side of a fence with something precious that Spencer wanted while she stood on the other side. She would never be able to get through until she gave him what he wanted, but she would never be able to give him what he wanted, either. Stuck. Always stuck.

She dressed quickly without making eye contact with him and when she finished she turned and hugged him tight. "Goodbye, Toby," she said softly, kissing him as if she loved him so much it was painful-which, Toby knew, she did. "I love you," she said as she turned to leave. Toby got the feeling that it was the last time he would ever hear those words, and all he could do was hope that his feeling was wrong as he called "I love you too" to her retreating form.

_come on skinny love what happened here?_  
_We suckled on the hope in light brassieres  
My my my my my my my  
Sullen load is full, so slow on the split_

"We have to stop meeting like this," Spencer giggled against Toby's lips, her arms wrapped around his waist, sounding like the happiest girl in the world, and, for the moment, she was. They _should_ quit meeting like this, she knew, they were only prolonging the inevitable, but there was something about Toby that made her unable to ever really let him go.  
"I know." Toby's voice was rumbly with arousal but cheerful. No matter how deep they got in all of this A-Team stuff, no matter how tightly Red Coat's chokehold was on them, Spencer was like sunshine, a breath of fresh air, a reminder that he was a person, a person who deserved every good thing that came to him, no matter what Red Coat or Jenna-in-his-head had to say about it. "but I don't want to."  
"Me either." Spencer rolled onto her back and grinned at the ceiling. Her hair was stuck to her forehead with sweat and her whole body was trembling pleasantly. "You just make me feel so good."  
Toby rolled over too, twining their fingers together as he studied the ceiling, finding patterns in the ceiling. "I know that feeling," he said with a grin, leaning over to kiss her ear.  
"When we're like this, it's hard not to believe that we'll have our happy ending," Spencer murmured, voice sleepy.  
Toby watched her as her breathing slowed and her face relaxed. "We will," he promised, and in the softly fading late afternoon light, he didn't just hope they would-he *knew* they would. "With a house and babies and everything."  
Spencer smiled. "Lots of babies," she mumbled as she drifted off to sleep.  
Toby nodded, drawing her close. "Lots of babies," he promised, but she was already sound asleep.

_And I told you to be patient_  
_And I told you to be fine  
And I told you to be balanced  
And I told you to be kind_

Two weeks to the day after their last good day, Spencer was sitting in the Rosewood public library when she got a video message from Toby. She smiled, retreating into the bathroom to open it. She hadn't heard from him in a few days, but she knew he must just be busy, might even be planning something special for them, and the video message was his dorky, Toby way of telling her.

The message showed Toby in a dark, nondescript room. It could have been one of his motel rooms, but Spencer somehow doubted it. She swallowed hard as he began to speak. "Spencer," he said, his voice husky, tired and fearful. "Listen, I only have a minute...but...I don't think I'm going to get out of here, and if I don't...I love you. I love you more than I ever imagined loving anybody, more than you could ever know. That's the one thing she can't take away from us, you know? And so I'm not going to give up, you know? I'm going to try as hard as I can to get out of here, but I don't know how long it's going to take, so...just be patient, okay? You're going to be fine, but you've just got to be patient a little while longer." There was a thud like a door slamming shut, and Toby's face was scared. "Shit," he mumbled. "Here she comes." He focused on the camera again, speaking quieter, more quickly this time. "I love you, Spence. Don't forget it. I'll be back for you someday, Spence, I promise. I love you. I love you so mu-" the door creaked open, and the screen went dark. Spencer yelped in panic, picking up her phone to dial 911 when it buzzed with a text message from an unknown number. "How romantic," it said. "too bad Toby has never been very good at keeping his promises." It was signed with two ominous letters: RC.

_And now all your love is wasted_  
_And who the hell was I?  
I'm breaking at the bridges  
And at the end of all your lines._

"You should have known you couldn't play both sides of the fence," Red Coat said. Her back was turned to Toby, but he would recognize that voice anywhere, and it made him want to throw up. "Spencer isn't so innocent either, Toby. You could do so much better."  
Toby spat at her, and he could feel her insolent grin even with her back turned. "I don't want better than Spencer," he said calmly.  
"Oh." Red Coat turned around, and sure enough, there was that insolent grin plastered across that horrible face. "Then I guess it's good that you'll never have anyone better."  
Toby didn't register that she had a gun in her hand until it was too late.

The thing that surprised Toby about being shot was that death was not instant. He wasn't sure why he had expected that it would be, but there were several long, painful minutes, blood trickling out of the hole in his chest-later, autopsy results would reveal that she had just missed his heart, but she had also left him there to bleed to death. "If only someone had heard him yell for help," the coroner would say, "he could have had a chance."

But nobody did hear him, and so it was in that abandoned farmhouse that Toby Cavanaugh, age 18, met his death by gunshot wound to the chest, and it was in that abandoned farmhouse that Toby Cavanaugh, age 18, had his last moments, drifting off into the Great Beyond with one singular thought in his head: Spencer Hastings.

And as he closed his eyes for the last time, he could have sworn he felt her kiss him goodbye.

_who will love you? _  
_Who will fight?  
Ooh, who will fall far behind?_

_Rosewood police have identified the body found in the farmhouse located at 82 Knotty Pine Way as that of 18-year-old Toby Cavanaugh, a representative for the department said yesterday. The police are considering the circumstances surrounding his death to be suspicious but are releasing no other details at this time._

Spencer shut off the tv, throwing the remote across the room, letting out a gut-wrenching sob. She had known since the story broke that there had been a body found in that farmhouse that it had been Toby's, but before the police had confirmed it she had allowed herself to entertain the possibility that he was safe, that somehow he had escaped and at any minute he would be bursting through the door and telling her it was finally time to go. Now, she had nothing.

Leaving a hastily scribbled note in a hand she barely recognized as her own, she threw a few things into her suitcase and threw that into the back of her car. She didn't know where she was going, she just knew she couldn't stay here.

_Alison killed Toby,_ the note read. _She won't stop until everyone she thinks wronged her is dead. That means me too. So I'm leaving. I love you all. I'm not crazy. Be safe._

She had just passed the 'Welcome to Rosewood' sign at the edge of town when it occurred to her: the day they found Toby's body would have been their first anniversary.

Reaching up, she touched the picture of Toby she had stuck in the sun visor-one of him smiling, genuinely smiling, at something just out of frame. Her beautiful, sweet, misunderstood boy. She loved him so much. "Forever," she promised his smiling face, and then hit the gas, not daring to look back.

_come on, skinny love, just last the year..._


End file.
